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Aboard the MV Abuyasser II, Red Sea | April 26, 2013

It was the borrowed mate’s cabin on the Syrian ship and it was strung with salt-hazed Christmas tree bulbs. A stuffed red heart swayed left, held, swayed right, held, and did so again, eternally, above the coffin bed. The ship shuddered through waves. It yawed under the shuffling ballast of 855 unlucky camels. Out the stern porthole, in the muzzy night, Africa receded like youth.


  • Milestone
    6
  • Day
    108
  • Mile
    500
  • Coordinates
    15°8'25" N
    41°49'23" E
  • Elevation (ft)
    0
Browse the interactive Map Room | Milestone permanent link
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The MV Abuyasser II

Livestock carrier
Age 35

Encounters

Who are you?

I’m an old Ro-Ro — “Roll-on-Roll-off” car carrier — refitted to haul camels and sheep.

Where do you come from?

The port of Djibouti.

Where are you going?

To Jeddah doing 9 knots. I could make 12. But my bottom wants scraping.

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1304_ms006_sky_2173

Milestones on the Human Trail

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and National Geographic Fellow Paul Salopek is retracing on foot the global migration of our ancestors in a 21,000-mile, seven-year odyssey that begins in Ethiopia and ends in Tierra del Fuego. This site houses our experimental journalism, cartography and educational initiatives. For the walk’s storytelling, please visit outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com.

By the year 2020, the Out of Eden Walk will have accumulated an unprecedented chronicle of human life on Earth, 2,500 generations after our restless forebears set out on the long, slow walk into our becoming — a journey out of Eden that continues to this day. Learn more »

Every 100 miles (160 km) Paul is making a concise digital record of his location — a narrative Milestone. Each consists of a visual panorama, photographs of the ground and sky, ambient sound at that location, and a brief, standardized interview with the nearest person.

Milestones are a slow accumulation of narrative data sets, a consistent record collected at nomad’s pace on a global scale. What will they ultimately tell us about ourselves?

National Geographic
The Camel and the Gyrocopter
The Camel and the Gyrocopter

The Out of Eden Walk's journalism is produced in partnership with the National Geographic Society. Follow exclusive dispatches from the trail at outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com.

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National Geographic
Dispatches from the Field
via National Geographic

The Out of Eden Walk's journalism is produced in partnership with the National Geographic Society. Follow exclusive dispatches from the trail at outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com.